Saturday, February 8, 2014

Kepler 413-b: A Planet With Rapid Seasonal Changes


Located in the constellation of Cygnus roughly 2,300 ly away, Kepler 413-b is a giant gas planet that is approximately 35 times larger than the Earth. From the image above, you can also see that the planet orbits a binary star system consisting of a red and orange dwarf. The orbital period is ~66 days.

Like the Earth, Kepler 413-b precesses about its axis of rotation. Strangely, however, the tilt of its axis can vary up to 30 degrees in an 11 year period (recall the Earth's has been a steady 23.5 degrees)! This is what is responsible for the sudden changes in seasons on the planet.

As is evidenced from its name, Kepler 413-b was discovered by the Kepler spacecraft. It was found in an analogous manner to the way we talked about detecting eclipsing binary star systems in class. That is, astronomers studied the dimming of the binary star system as the planet passed in front of it during its orbit. Interestingly, through inconsistencies in the transit period of Kepler 413-b, astronomers were also able to discover that its orbit is tilted by 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the orange dwarf-red dwarf binary system (see picture above).

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